Thursday, February 4, 2016

Dear Nice Guys - Your Silences Will Not Protect You

One of the things I actually find useful in social media and some of the email lists I am subscribed to is that other thinkers and healers and speakers connect me up with some GREAT wisdom that I might not have otherwise seen.

And so it is today. This came to me from a well-known therapist, author and speaker, Bill O'Hanlon. (Follow him on Twitter @POSSIBILL)


"I was going to die sooner or later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you. What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language." – Audre Lorde, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer

Oh, my fellow Nice Guys and People Pleasers, that one hits me square in the chest. How many things I have left unspoken. How many times I have stayed silent.

I get better at speaking my truth every year, but it is a journey. I hope this quote gives you some motivation to speak just a little more of your truth.

I wish you the best, Peter